Cutting my organisation very fine for this, and I’m fucking shitting myself with nervousness, but super excited to give it a crack and to see everyone again.
If anyone needs, or can use it, I’ve split the massive .gpx file into 7 chunks (my garmin couldn’t handle the full size route in one hit). Lemme know if this link doesn’t work properly -I’m a bit of a gumby with the uploading/file sharing stuff sometimes.
Some boys and gals must have gotten pretty wet recently. Also, some good rambling over night in Canberra and probably in the mountains as well for a good night of sleep.
Ollie from Omafiets and Mike D are not wasting any time and very near Adam who started half a day before. Dan Hunt not far either.
Does anyone know Gypsy’s and Harry’s aliases? Can’t work them out from the rider’s list.
Harry isn’t doing it - Gypsy is with Keith at the moment, Mikel was with them last night but looks to have dropped back a bit. Last I saw of Gypsy, his body wasn’t cooperating. Hopefully today it will kick into gear.
I rode with the group on Sunday for about 15kms along some really nice single track - mostly hanging out with MikDee whilst giving him a live audio tour of the south of Canberra. Highlights included 'The Kambah Pool Nudist Beach, Red Rock Gorge and the many Absent Abseilers and the Old Tuggeranong Rock Wall’.
I left the group, said my goodbyes and good luck. On the way home I had a message from Keith and Thomas Crowley (its also worth noting that his spot tracker isn’t appearing on the map). Thomas’ front rack had some issues - I picked him up and we went to my plumber mates house to see about some clamps where we discovered the rack mount had actually broken. So he ditched the rack and is now completing the ride with my saddle bag and front harness. A peanut butter sandwich and filter coffee and we loaded the bike in the car to bring him back to the group. Thomas was cool with starting all over but with the weather the way it is he had no choice - I wanted to get him back to safety. Since he had his mechanical with Keith, we towed him back up to Keith. I filled up a water keg and stopped to fill up most of the riders bottles. I had a bag full of treats from my brothers 40th birthday which I handed out also (chocolates, fruit boxes etc). I kept leapfrogging groups offering assistance until I got to the head group who had stopped for lunch at Brayshaws Homestead which is just past the 100km mark on the ACT border. I was happy to help everyone out as much as I could, I know I would appreciate it if something similar would have happened to me.
